- Published on
Episode 20 of Morning Maker Show: Lost in Helsinki.
- Authors
- Name
- Morning Maker Show
Summary
Join Sandra & Dan as they record live from the streets of Helsinki (at least 50% of them do). The duo takes on everything from marketing tools to recipe generators, all while Dan is dodging the cancel club and brainstorming new startup ideas. So grab your caffeine fix and let's go!
Join the conversation & see the tweets/posts we read! Stop by our space 💬
Transcript
Dan: Sandra had a bit of an accident, she actually got lost in Helsinki, I don't know how. So, unfortunately she is on the streets somewhere. And she just pulled out her laptop. I think she's in front of a butcher. She's just doing the show.
Sandra: Yeah. So I hate when people invite me to things and then I have to respect them and come to the things. And then I got lost in the city and then the Metro was wrong. And then I take out of the Metro. So right now I'm in some high kind of house starting, um, outside doing the show.
Dan: Well, Aren't you going to be cold?
It's Finland, right? Yes, but I'm
Sandra: a tough little guy. I can do
Dan: these things.
You see, this is what it means to be really determined to do the show. It's a responsibility. It's. Nothing can stand in your way to do it. I fully
Sandra: agree, but it's also, lesson learned when you have like 40 minutes and you need to be some, somewhere to do it, um, just take those 40 minutes wherever you are, don't rush, don't think you can make it because you can't.
Dan: Yeah. Well, um, I, I like this next time. Let's, uh, let's make it a challenge. Like what weird place could we record? I
Sandra: fully agree with you. Um, yeah, it's going to be
Dan: a fun show. Let's get into it, Sandra. We have a couple things that have happened since last time. Also with Greg, we have an update from Greg.
Which actually launched another product today and he's on product hunt, which is amazing. Um, there's a person that can't get into the building behind Sandra, so I completely lost my focus. It's quite funny. Uh, and then we had the release. Of the new text to video, um, model, I guess, or whatever we call it. Sora.
Yeah. Which looks freaking incredible. I, I don't think we'll get access anytime soon, but once we get access, I just brainstormed last, yeah. Are you, are you going to do something with it? Um,
Sandra: I mean, I already did it last night. I don't know if you checked my Twitter account, but many actually believe me that it was video made by them.
And it was totally fake. But, um, yeah, yeah. Also, I liked so many of your ideas. Maybe I will steal actually some of
Dan: them. Yeah, I think one of the The ideas really resonated with people, which was to transform the Ikea instruction manual into a step by step video instead. Brilliant.
Sandra: The one that I really, really liked was, um, actually the, the, um, exercising tool videos.
Dan: Sandra, I'm sorry. We need to redo the show. We forgot the most important part. João wrote it in the comments. Let's do it again on three, right? Three, two, one, or on one. Okay, you got it. Good morning, Sandra.
Sandra: Good morning,
Dan: Dan. How could we start without it?
Sandra: What happened? It's the rush. It's the rush.
Dan: Yeah. So, um, I'm super excited.
I'm also a little bit A little bit concerned that we're not going to get it first. So I don't know who's going to get it first, but definitely not the average, you know, average indie maker. And I, from what I read, they already gave it to some artists and, you know, professionals and people like that, probably very famous ones, of course, cause they need to, they're probably in marketing mode now.
Yeah.
Sandra: But you know what this got me thinking, it's so exciting that last night I was actually Googling and trying to find how did people feel when the first flight happened in the world?
Dan: Yeah.
Sandra: Because that's, that's how I, that's, that's type of feeling I currently have. I feel like we are in midst of something, some kind of change and we are still not able to even understand how it's going to influence all of our lives.
And it could be only that we are living in our own bubble and it's only influencing our own lives, you know, but it's kind of exciting.
Dan: I don't think, I don't think so. I, this is one of those that can change, you know, media consumptions for everyone. And, you know, when you do something that's an API, for example, right, maybe it's not as life changing, but this is more akin to a tool that.
anyone can use to essentially replace their media consumption. So that's what I, when I saw this, I thought, well, now we can have infinite favorite movies of whatever you want to like, you know, not now, now, but this, this is becoming a possibility. You know, the series with 21 seasons, now you can create them for yourself, or you can have apps that create these.
So you essentially consume that content instead. And you. You can continue as much as you want. That's also one of the things. There are shows that have a few episodes, and you would like them to continue, but they don't.
Sandra: Now you can have your happy ending, huh?
Dan: Yeah. And I wonder how that's gonna change. You know, we are missing one of the pieces, which is to give it input.
So how do you tell it? What are the characters you can tell it in text, right? But you want them to look the same and I'm afraid if you do a show like that Throughout the show you might you know, you start with a character that looks like something and then one hour later that that character is giraffe with you know different clothes and everything because the AI cannot Keep the, the character to look the same, you know?
Sandra: Yeah, yeah, I get you, but I think when, when we reach that level, they will be able to figure these things out. You know, just saving, I mean, it's mind blowing, it's mind blowing. When do you think it's going to be
Dan: released? I actually think we'll get something this year, but with a waitlist situation where you can apply and some people will get it.
Um, and then probably next year we'll, we'll see a broader rollout, not earlier than that. And they don't even have the waitlist up. So that's why I'm thinking when they released the, Text to image one, or GPT 4, you know, there was always a waitlist, so, and that one took a few months for people to get it, for the first people, and then maybe half a year for the rest.
Yeah. So we're not even there. So at least half a year after the waitlist is announced.
Sandra: Yeah, but I have an update, a funny one. So last time, last night I wanted to actually launch it on Product Hunt. So I submitted the application and they took it for a review, but it seems like someone was faster than me and they already launched it on Product Hunt.
Dan: Oh, so you actually got blocked at the end of the process, or what?
Sandra: No, they told me the product is already launched, and when I checked, it was actually on Product Hunt.
Dan: Oh, okay, yeah. I mean, I would imagine a lot of people had the same idea. But it was like a matter of seconds, you're saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sandra: It was already there, and I was like, shit, someone got my idea. And there was probably a million of us.
Dan: Yeah. Um I think I'm really excited and I think this is one of those that will change how not not only developers look at things but how you know the average person looks and I think also chat GPT was was like that, but it was a lot harder for people to to get started on it to see the value and with video it's it's a lot easier people cannot hide right because on social media.
You consume a lot of video these days, like Instagram, TikTok. So as soon as this becomes available, I imagine that we're going to see social media flooded with it, don't you think? Yeah, for sure.
Sandra: And you know, what's what's really exciting actually for me. Oh my God. I'm sorry. I don't know. Can you hear this?
But there is a car stuck in a snow and looking at me that expecting that I'm going to help them. I don't know how anyway,
Dan: did you ever consider to push a car? In the show to help someone?
Sandra: Um, no,
Dan: we can't hear it. So it's fine. It's fine.
But
Sandra: they are actually talking with me right now. Anyway, so the one thing that is really exciting for me is actually sharing this with my brother, because when it comes to chat GPT, um, the text base, you know what we currently have experienced, he can't be as creative as he wants.
Or I don't see it, you know, but with the video, it's totally different. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. It's, it's a lot easier to express your creativity. I just also think one of the barriers initially will be the cost of this. So that's what we have to see, you know, cause it's kind of expensive to do images already. So how much does it cost to make you know, a 10 minute video and will the average person be able to afford that in the beginning?
Sandra: Exactly, exactly. But it's a classic. But Dan, we're not here to do this. No, we're not. Why are we running Morning Maker
Dan: Show? We have a show to do, we have updates to go through. So, let's do it. Let's go. Let's go. I'm ready to take the first one by none other than Greg, actually. And he's actually covering for the story that I want to say later in the episode, but this is how updates come.
I cannot control them. So he's saying
I'm back on product hunt today. Here's a short presentation of the product. Please consider supporting the launch. Go to product hunt and find the prayer page. So he posted a video where he shows the product. I know what it is. It's a cool little app where it's kind of, how can I explain it for someone that knows nothing about this?
It's like, Karaoke, but for praying. So you get the, you get the lyrics. I'm sorry, Greg. Um, and you actually see the people that are also praying. at the same time with you, which is such a cool feature. So you kind of get the sense of belonging and you know, it's, now it's a group activity.
So that's very cool. Congrats. Congrats, Greg, go support him. Yeah. I hope Greg's going to put a comment in the show somewhere with his product hunt launch.
So should we segue into the next topic? Yes, please. So. Unrelated to Greg completely.
Like he's let's, let's take Greg out of the equation. A lot of people have not been featured lately on product hunt. And we started to ask around and a few sources have started to say, well, you know, the reason why some of the products get featured is because they use hunters that have been on product hunt for a very long time.
And when Product Hunt launched, the idea was that they have something called tastemakers. Oh, flamboyant. And these tastemakers, they could push products all the way to the front page. They could feature the products without, you know, going through the same checks if you want. And this thing is called homepage rights.
And the myth is that These people still have these rights sometimes, and they can actually bypass, you know, the traditional process. And, you know, since it's so hard to get featured, apparently, it might be a good idea to reach out for popular hunters and to, to get them to hunt your product instead. And it's not really confirmed, like, I've, I've asked around, people are saying, yeah, it's true, it used to be like that, but no one knows anymore.
Uh, but there isn't really a thing in the UI that shows this. So if there is something still set, it's somewhere deep in the product hunt system, I would say.
Sandra: Does it get me mad? Yes, very much. You know, um, I've launched a few products and I've never even thought about not being featured until Philippe's product.
And actually, no, Morning Maker show, but then we were featured later on the day after reaching out to them and et cetera. So when I heard this story, I was so mad.
Dan: But don't you think there is something to it? Okay, if Product Hunt was this community based you know, how to put it, not, not big money, uh, little people company based on community, based on, you know, people like, like us that, that's driving it and bringing exciting products, it would make sense to use this community.
To, you know, filter out the things that are not that exciting. And a bit like, uh, how are these, uh, like Reddit has upvotes, right? But, okay, this is different, but this is more like, uh, an admin of sorts that helps them curate the actual products that get featured because there's also a lot of crap. Let's be honest.
Sandra: Yes, continue. I'm trying to get, I'm looking for the
Dan: point. So I, I don't think it's bad that we have this. What I would like is if we do have it to make it transparent and then for people to know, okay, then, then we need to use hunters and then a hunter could actually say, well, no, I won't hunt your.
product. I don't think it's good enough. And that would be the layer of approval. So then we don't get in these situations where you're either featured or not based on who knows what you just find out on the launch day, but the hunter tells you straight off the bat, well, this is not a good enough product.
It's not going to be featured. Uh, and, and that's it. No mystery.
Sandra: Hunter has a bigger role as well and responsibility in that sense. From that perspective, I like it, you know, but also it's very subjective to say which product is good, which product is not, you know, so I don't know. It's very triggering for me.
Dan: Yeah. So you. You'd think it should be more equal, more fair, everybody has the same chance?
Sandra: Absolutely. Absolutely. I, I, I mean, we, we can't all finish on the feature page. I understand that. Um, there, but there should be, as you said, there's transparency where you can see the reasons why you're not featured.
Dan: Yeah. Got it. I, I agree with that. I think transparency in general is, is what's needed, even if you have this feature or not. Someone should say, well, this is how it works. I don't really like this mystery around it. And then what I really don't like is for people to work for, you know, months building a product and then maybe prepare for a couple of weeks and then find out that they're not featured and, you know, people take their day off.
And and try to go there. So I think this is one of the reasons why we're seeing product on declining and popularity and a lot of people criticizing it. It's all related together. Don't you think? Absolutely.
Sandra: Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I think we've especially during past year, we've tried to reach out to them, you know, Absolutely.
To, to bring the voices of the community as well. It's just, they're, they're lacking this, um, ability to listen or to hear us. I, I'm not quite sure what is the issue. I think in general, we have really good suggestions and we wouldn't change many things. Um, I think the transparency would be one of the, one of the things that we would ask for.
Dan: I agree. So hopefully one day someone will listen to us. Um, I, I hope. I really hope they do because I, I think of course I understand their business. They need to make money and they're particularly not interested in us right now, uh, even though it's, it's not like, you know, this vision of indie hackers cannot.
Afford to pay for anything, or I heard a lot of people say this, Oh, you're, you're, we're not in the target group because we have no money. Well, that's relative, right? I don't, I don't agree with that. And of course we don't have 5, 000 for product hunt ads. That's true. I, or I, at least I don't think it's worth it, but they could have different approaches to, to bring this community.
And the fact is we can make a lot of noise. We can bring a lot of people to their platform and, um, maybe, maybe even more so than the bigger companies that don't have the same experience with launching something, you know, we've launched so many things. We know how to get people to come to product hunt.
Essentially. That's what we're doing. We're indirectly. Helping them get visits, right? For sure.
Sandra: For sure. But Alison is doing something...
banneduild day 2 extension pages front end done now still have an hour left of my daily three goal. We'll try to finish UI of all pages. Hashtag building public.
Dan: This is incredible.
So day two, and it kind of, it looks like a. Fully blown app, um, what the hell?
Sandra: Alison is soon to read, ready to be on Product Hunt.
Dan: Yeah. Nice job, Alison. That's very quick. So, okay. I assume since this is still being built, uh, we don't have a link. So I would say. Put the link in the, in the tweet, but I'm afraid there is no link in this case.
So you're excused Alison, this one time.
Sandra: Yeah, it's the first time on the show. So we can, we can comprehend that at the moment.
Dan: Yeah. All right. Let's do, let's do more updates. I can do the next one by Elias Strowick. Elias. Elias. Yeah. Close enough. What's the chance we get any of these names right? After all, we're on episode 20, Sandra.
How many names do you think we got right? I
Sandra: just wanted to use this opportunity because I was quite positive how to pronounce it.
Dan: Oh, so you just wanted to be a smartass. Thanks. Yeah. Good. Uh, I barely say your name right, I think. So, but that's still, it's still something. Yeah, right. All right. Sorry. Go. Go.
Go. Go. Go. You have, you have some people that you need to help out of the snow while I read the updates. Just do a quick one. Updates incoming. roastservice.com now supports whole page roasting, UX conversion, and copywriting scores. 20 plus tests, personalized next steps, and of course, he has a demo video on how all of this works.
So. First of all, the link is in the tweet. Nice job. Fantastic. So, this is a service that gives you actionable feedback on your landing page. And as I understand, it's partly AI based. As well, you submit your link. And then it takes a little bit for, you know, the, the little robot to calculate what's, what's wrong.
And then you, you get a report and actual steps on, on how to improve your landing page, which is pretty cool.
Sandra: It's actually really cool. How much is it? What is the pricing? Do they have the pricing? 17 euros per a roast.
Dan: Dollars. Dollars. Yeah. It's good. It's very good. It's it's imagine how much you need to pay a human to get.
The same kind of feedback, huh? Would you, would
Sandra: you ever roast, um, or submit Morning Maker Show landing page for a roast?
Dan: I don't think so, because if I would get something negative, my heart will be broken. I put so much of my soul into that website, you know?
Sandra: Actually, that's the most beautiful website, and I'm not joking.
Um, I think I go on Morning Maker Show on a daily basis just to see that pinkish vibe. It's so cute and nice.
Dan: Yeah, my favorite Part of it is in dark mode when you load it, and you have like this little bit of sun in the corner, like a little bit yellow, so it's like the morning happens, it's the eye, love it.
Sandra: You have a crazy eye on details, man, I'm jealous sometimes.
Dan: You know, the funny part is we, we built this step by step. We didn't really have a vision. And then when we built it, I mean, I'll never forget that we made, we made the logo in the show and then we made the website in the show and you were just saying, put this in the center, put this up, put this left or right.
And I can't believe we arrived at this beautiful website. Yeah.
Sandra: And it was all done in
Dan: like 30 minutes. Yeah, yeah. The hardest part was the logo and the font, basically, the website was nothing. Anyway, I actually have, speaking about building websites, I've been building something this week. Oh. And I actually thought I'm going to build it the entire week, but Took a lot less.
Uh, I've been doing A B testing. So this is the first time I ever try it. I know in principle how it works. You serve two different versions, then with enough people, you can get statistical significance that one version of the thing converts better. And in the way I did it, so of course I did it. By using one of our sponsors products, Posthog, and the way I did it in Posthog is you can define a primary action and a secondary action.
So what does that mean? If you have a CTA as I have, you can basically say that the primary action is to buy and then the secondary action is to download, which for me is sort of like a demo in this case, and it was way easier to to do than I imagined. I essentially swapped two components. So in my, in my implementation, anyway, in React, I have two different components and I just swapped them all together and the stats are coming.
And then that's it. It was literally a few hours to do it. So now I have a problem. I'm not sure how long I should wait before, you know, this is, this is significant.
Sandra: Yeah, on Posthog there needs to be a certain amount of people coming through in order for them to process the data. And I mean, you've, I think you've shared your, um, it was like two days ago or something like that.
So there's going to be around two weeks probably where you will be able to kind of see clearly on what's happening.
Dan: Yeah, two weeks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. But, but yeah, um, I'm, I'm curious. I think for the most part, this, this, uh, implementation that I did could work with anything. I made a small component.
I could, I could share that later and you can essentially say AB test. To the pricing section or to some stuff on the features page and so on. But I think the CTA is like the most interesting part for me. I've changed the copy 10 times. I don't know if you, you keep changing it. Have you arrived at something that you think is good?
Sandra: My copy has been around for like, I haven't touched it probably in four months now, but it was while building the website, it was going back and forward. Um, when I was building the, also our SEO strategy, I've changed multiple things and try to kind of fit and position it better in that sense, but they haven't touched it in four months almost.
I'm pretty proud of myself. Oh,
Dan: that's fantastic. I, yeah, I wouldn't not last for four months because after a while, I would think. What if there is something better I could write and I would experiment and I've done that without measuring before and I was a little bit scared now because it was kind of working and without A B testing, what if, what if I made it worse?
Right? That's the question.
Sandra: But that's the fun part that the only way to find out these things is. Either it's going to fail or it's going to work. You still got out something. Yeah. You know, my, my, my trick always has been since I joined like in the making community and the dev side of the world I always, you know, I've, I've joined as a marketing person and talked about marketing but I never in my wildest dreams would thought that actually analytic and data would turn a developer into a marketing person.
And it's just beautiful to see this.
Dan: You've created a monster.
Sandra: I have. Created a monster and I'm really proud.
Dan: No further comments. Would you take the next update, please? Yes.
Sandra: Kris Lazinski.
I had a busy January, so I'm a little late to the party, three dots. But here is my summary of my indie app business in 2023 after exactly two years of on the app store. Feel free to ask if you have any questions.
Dan: Um, So, 271 percent growth since he, since he started on the app store.
And that is, I assume growth in, well, actually I'm not sure, is it just downloads or also revenue or both? I mean, I'm looking in the comments. I think, I think we're looking at downloads to be honest.
Sandra: Probably, probably.
Dan: Or it says, yeah, business. I'm not entirely sure. It might be revenue, which then it's, it's quite crazy.
But it's hard to, it's hard to judge what is that amount if you don't have a relative number. If, you know, if you started with ten, ten dollars, and you have an increase of 271%, it's, it's It's 30 now or 40, so I hope, Chris, uh, I hope you started with 10, 000 and now you're at 40, 000 or more and it's going fantastic.
I really like to. Uh, to see your success. Very cool. I
Sandra: just want to add next to all the people in the space right now, there is people around me as well, listening to the show.
Dan: So is this a, is this a location that you would recommend for registering, recording a podcast, Sandra?
Sandra: Absolutely. Absolutely. This is a pure example that you don't need much to start.
Dan: I think you also managed to find a building where people keep going in and out. So it's actually quite impressive that you found the only building that's so busy at this hour.
Sandra: I have to tell you, there was two girls standing next to me and they were so passionately listening for what we are saying here.
So I hope they've learned something.
Dan: I hope they become a Morning Maker Show member. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be honest, is this a new type of marketing that you're trying?
Sandra: Yes, yes, I love standing and sitting in cold Finland outside and just promoting our Morning Maker show to other people. I
Dan: knew it. Just a person comes by.
Hi, you should just have a hat with morningmakershow.com.
Sandra: Oh, actually I could do that next time, maybe in the library or where is there more people and it's a little bit more like warm.
Dan: Yeah. Oh boy. All right. Let's take the next update. You want to do it? Yes.
Sandra: Guli Oh, Dan, you are so mean today. Guli Herme.
I'm so sorry, Guli Herme.
Whoa, I finally reached the second Indie Hacker Milestone. Took me one year of cringing to get here. Um, but I'm very happy with everything I've built and learned so far. How long did it take you to get To one K. Hey, this is
Dan: cool. Hey, that's big. Congrats that big. I would, okay. Can I, can I have a try at this?
Yes, please. You learn me . Congrats. This is huge. I mean, it doesn't matter. How long, okay, he says grinding, but it doesn't matter how long, if you enjoyed the journey. You know what I mean? Or you don't know the circumstances. Was it one year full time? Did you do things on the side? Did you do multiple products?
But if you feel good about it, that's, that's all that matters. Isn't it?
Sandra: I fully agree with you. I fully agree with you. I sometimes think to myself that it's not only about like the end or the goals or the milestones, but the journey itself. Yeah. So, yeah, that was very nicely put.
Dan: Yeah. Speaking about the journey, if you actually care to speed up your SEO journey, one of our sponsors, Magic Space SEO, actually has Some pretty cool offers.
So it's made by fellow Indie Hacker Ilias. If you've, you've probably seen him around and I've checked it out. He can do a lot of things. He could do audits. He could do backlinks. He could help you boost your, your traffic. Actually, I actually need a lot of help because I've noticed that. I have a good domain authority, but right now the keywords are going down.
So I used to rank for quite a few keywords and it's plummeting. And to be honest, I don't know what to do. Uh, I, I have a bit of content. I have good backlinks, the authority doesn't go down, but I kind of need someone to give me a, an idea on, on what I should do is very tricky with this. You know, it's up and down.
I don't know how it is for you.
Sandra: Um, I mean, I'm sharing the same thing. It's always up and down. I think I shared a few days ago a screenshot of ups and downs, ups and downs all the time. So it's kind of really hard to hit that right thing and to see how it works. Also, you know, he told me that it's too wide as well.
And I, I need a little bit of filtering when it comes to content itself. And I thought that I'm doing a quite good job, so I'm going to definitely use these services.
Dan: Yeah. I, I, I need some help. So see, there's in our, in our discord, there are a lot of people that are good with SEO. Some days I think, I got this, I know what I'm doing.
And then. It works well. And then for some products that I have, it just doesn't work no matter what I do. And it, it's also seasonal. So if you have good launch, if you have some channels that are going particularly well, and people might search for your product, that's how it was for Shipixen for me. A lot of people have heard about the product and then they remembered perhaps the next day and search for it.
And then it seemed like SEO is going fantastic, but. Then it was just a spike of a few days and then it returned to normal. So that's also a thing that should keep in mind. But for me, I need help with keyword planning and trying to create, uh, some sort of content for, for your keywords. So it's, it's more of a long term game where.
You know, I, I start ranking for specific keywords instead of putting content out there and seeing if it sticks. I try to do helpful content anyway, and a lot of the content I do is also documentation for the products. So that's good, or features, or, you know, use cases. But I feel like I don't have a master plan, if you know what I mean.
Yeah.
Sandra: And I mean, it took me so long to even start with SEO. I think it was after like, what, eight, nine months of doing Clue because I'm so scared of long term strategies with early stage products. So at this point, as I'm experimenting and seeing what's happening, I think also it's good to kind of build a foundation from the beginning.
Dan: Yeah. So. Yeah, completely agree. Please tell the people behind you that are waiting at the door that they could join the Morningmaker show discord.
Sandra is actually having a chat with the people there. All right. This is brilliant. You know what I think? I think you should go around Helsinki with your laptop while we're recording and and try to try to advertise for us. Get some, get some members.
Sandra: You know those TikToks when there's a mic, small mic, and then people are asking around, have you done this?
So you've done this. I'm going to go around and ask, have you built this? Have you tried this? You know, make a show.
Dan: Do you think there's a big chance you'll find random indie makers in Helsinki while just walking about? Actually, there's
Sandra: two
Dan: indie makers in Finland. Also, small
Sandra: chances. I'm planning to hunt them down at some point.
Dan: But then what's the population, 200? So you have like a 1 percent chance anyway, that's not bad.
Sandra: Yeah. Well, there's 5 million people in Finland, there's around 2, no, there's like 2 million in South
Dan: part. No way. I thought it's just like a few people in a couple houses. Oh, you were
Sandra: joking with me. Okay. Thank you, Denmark.
Denmark. Denmark.
Dan: This is how Denmark is, so I can make this joke.
Okay. Like entire, entire Denmark is a suburb in like a medium sized city in China. It's, it's not even, it's, it's not even a blip on the radar. It's very small.
Sandra: I was ready to insult you really bad and say that it's a neighbor from Germany.
Dan: You know, I just want to make another comment. The, the building that you arrived at.
That door doesn't really work at all. Like people are struggling to get in the building. I don't get it, but they are
Sandra: enjoying a really good show, so I don't feel bad.
If, if, if . If I was somewhere and I wasn't able to open the door, I would hope that there is a good show around me to watch it.
Dan: Yeah, absolutely. Coming home after work, seeing a person, not. You know, not, not creepy at all. Just a person standing in front of my building, recording something and talking in English is exactly what I would like to find.
You see,
Sandra: you're on the same level. Great.
Dan: All right. I'm, I'm making too much fun of you. Please, please let's do the show Monday as well. Yeah,
Sandra: I'll find a better location, actually.
Dan: Okay, I can take the next update by Just, or Just, or I think it's Just. He's probably from the States.
He's saying, after grinding through weekends, my personal project is now taking shape.
I grew tired of spreadsheets, so I made a frictionless budgeting app with a simple drag and drop UI. So it looks a Trello.
But for, for your finances, so you essentially have, you know, backlog, upcoming, and then what you've allocated and then the money that you, and you move the cards around. So now you move some of your money to allocate it and then the rest of the stuff updates. This is freaking awesome. I love this.
Sandra: I love this.
Dan: Where is the link? I don't see a link. There is no. No, there is a link. There is a link.
Sandra: This is so good. People need to check this out.
Dan: It's on budgetkanban.com Oh my god. They're saying we're in super beta.
I will so try this after the show. It looks freaking fantastic. Just You've, you've nailed it. The design is, is so nice. And I think as, as long as you don't have too many of these cards, I think it could work very well. It's so simple. It's so elegant. It looks so
Sandra: freaking good. I'm just sharing it in the comments so everyone else
Dan: can see.
Yeah, you need to try this. I can't believe it. Every show we find one of these, I can't believe it. It's so good.
Sandra: That's why we
Dan: are doing this show, Dan. Yeah, fantastic. Okay. Next update, you want to take it, Sandra?
Sandra: Yes. Si Di Je Do. This is smooth, you have to, you have to give this
Dan: to me. Yeah, like, like old Japanese whiskey.
Go on.
If you
Sandra: If you have a SaaS product with five users, what would you do? A. Add more features for the existing users or B. Focus on marketing and SEO. I think we all know this, this answer and we've been discussing you add more
Dan: features. Yeah, more features. It's always more features. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's move on.
Yeah. So absolutely marketing. I wouldn't do even SEO. Because that takes a really long time, but if you can do some marketing that you get results now, whatever that is, what, what's the quickest way to get to validate, what, what do you think you could do to validate?
Sandra: I mean, it would be always nice to know for who you are building the app, you know, if, if, and then just hanging around with people.
That you're building the app to so you discover the channel where these people are. It could be a simple slack channel where there's a bunch of product managers and you'll slide simply there,
Dan: you know? Yeah. So your approach is get direct contact with your users. But of course, if you have the app launched, you should have a pretty good idea on who this is for.
And actually that, that sounds like a reasonable thing, but not everyone could say. They know exactly who they built that for a lot of times is. For ourselves, if that makes sense, I mean, I I've been through that as well. When you think, yeah, I, I would like to use it this way, but maybe you should take a step back, figure out who else are you building this for?
What's, what's the actual target group and then embed yourself into it. Exactly.
Sandra: I think, um, we often make mistakes where we think about the product through our own eyes. Even if we have a target audience and then kind of like just take assumptions. And I really, really hate when we are taking assumptions.
Um, you only take assumptions when you don't have ability to, to, to kind of figure it out. But when I was starting Glue, I knew it was always about the people and who are we building this and then starting from them. And including them in story and, and then taking the feedback and, you know, it's always about the people who you are building it to.
It could be just one person, you know, you don't have to have like 50 people. Yeah.
Dan: To test. You know why, why I love this? Because this advice works for everyone. Because what I would do is if I want to validate something now, I would, I would do a demo, a video and I would Maybe do a homepage and five minutes with ship extent, put a Lemon Squeezy link and say, you know, if you like this, buy it at, but that's because I have, you know, some followers and then I will get.
Some, some people looking at this, right? But not everyone has a, maybe some people just started and then your advice works for them as well, because you can go on that Slack or that Reddit or whatever, where your target group is no matter the situation and talk to them and figure out. If this is going to work or not, you can still do the same with the link.
I think that's something specific to Twitter or X though, where you, we don't even have a product yet. It's like a pre order thing and you put it out there and then people would get it only if they have a certain trust in you or. You have built other things that they liked and then they think, okay, this looks like a good idea.
And then this person, I know this person is going to go through with the idea is going to be great. So then I'll get the pre order because I'm getting a good deal now. Yeah.
Sandra: Slack channels are the best.
Dan: Yeah,
Sandra: but, um, you know, I think it would be a nice challenge even for you, Dan, if you would, um, kind of had to go outside of Twitter as a main channel of the traffic.
Did you thought about that? Yeah.
Dan: I'm trying. I'm trying. Yeah. I'm trying. I really don't like Twitter as a, as a channel. It works great, but it works in bursts. So you get an incredible amount of people seeing, buying, so on, and then that lasts for 48 hours and then you're, you're back to nothing and you have to do it again and you cannot do the same thing ever again.
It's just, it happened, it worked, now you start from scratch. And this is such an exhausting channel to, to have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sandra: Yeah, maybe you need a new challenge.
Dan: Yeah, so I'm trying various, but I've mentioned before SEO and that that's why I was thinking, you know, Illias' magic space SEO is something good.
There's always people that focus on a niche and they're going to be better than you are. And that's. Like, I'm not afraid to admit that I'm not the best at anything. I know a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and I can put it together into something. But sometimes talking to someone that focused in, that zeroed in into a topic is the best way to advance your
Sandra: project.
And especially in the beginning where you are actually just setting up foundation for something, having someone who will lead that process for you and kind of you're going to learn so much is super important too.
Dan: Yeah. One more update and then we have another topic that we haven't discussed. That's the.
The people getting banned from their payment providers. Maybe we can touch a bit on that, but I'm actually more interested in this update. If you want to take it.
Sandra: George Medina.
New launch space in the scene. My micro launch headquarter. Oh, interesting. Oh, and easybranding.io just snatched the second spot.
Come join and let's get that number one spot.
Dan: Wait, wait, wait. So his product is micro launch, not easy branding. Yes. Yes. Okay. I almost went on the competitor. So let's see what MicroLaunch is. The place where hundreds of makers showcase their products, rank, find users and customers. We're in, we're in beta.
So as far as I can tell, you can put your products there and You can vote. Um, I'm not sure how long the voting takes. I actually
Sandra: signed up to voting.
Dan: Have you seen this before?
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. Do you know how it works? No idea. It didn't.
Sandra: It didn't quite work. The sign up process, it didn't quite work for me.
So I tried it multiple times. So then I was like, okay, maybe I'm doing something wrong because I didn't know how to actually vote. And then in the process of figuring out, I just quit.
Dan: Oh, I'm sorry. It is a beta though. So I'm sure things will improve. But
Sandra: it looks super cool and it looks super interesting.
And I was like, wait a minute, what is this?
Dan: Is it similar to product hunt somehow, or that's, it seems like it. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about, okay, we're, we're back at this. Why do you think about all of the. new, I wouldn't say product hunt competitors, but sites similar to product hunt that, that essentially come from a frustration that product hunt isn't what it used to be.
And then they're trying to make an alternative version of it. I, I'm,
Sandra: I mean, I'm excited to see it and I'm, I, you know, I'm excited to support it as well. I think it's a long process and someone needs to be extremely determined or, or do this. Um, Constantly, it's not an easy thing to build, uh, Product Hunt launch, uh, Product Hunt, sorry, launch Product Hunt.
And, um, but I'm excited to see that actually people are willing to try and test it out with others.
Dan: Yeah, a hundred percent. I, I I'm very excited by everyone that's doing this because if we have competition, then. Hopefully we have Product Hunt doing something about this, this state, right? So the more competition, the better in my eyes, uh, maybe they will, they will look around and say, Hey, we're maybe doing something wrong.
Why is everyone thinking we need a new version of this? Like, what can we change?
Sandra: There's nothing better happening to you and your product than competition. And I love, I love that and I, I truly, truly believe in that because it pushes us to be better and to push more and to figure out things, you know, not, it doesn't have to be harder, but you kind of push to figure the things out.
Dan: Yeah. All right. Sandra, you're freezing. I think we'll keep the, we'll keep the PayPal and, and wise, uh, updates for next time. Do you want to say something to, to the people that. Have listened to you being outside in the cold.
Sandra: I just want to say that even though it's freezing, raining and snowing in the same time and there are so many people and it's a little bit uncomfortable even for me.
I love, I love this show so much that I, again, I enjoy
Dan: it. How many years? Will you keep doing this show, Sandra?
Sandra: I can promise you 10, but I hope for more.
Dan: Just 10. Okay. I'm disappointed. Yeah, I thought I was ready to say, Oh, we're going to do this forever. I mean, okay. Realistically, we might not have Twitter in 10 years, so it's going to be difficult to do the show, but you know, Uh,
Sandra: that's what I was supposed to do on my point, Rova, that was my point.
I'm hoping that we're gonna move to TV.
Dan: Yeah, of course. We're gonna have an AI generated version of the show in six months, so. Oh, that would be cool. Yeah, we have 20 episodes, so we just trained the AI on the previous episodes, and then we're good to go. Brilliant. Everybody, thank you so much for joining.
Remember that you can see past episodes on morningmakershow.com. Sign up for the newsletter and also listen on Spotify and Apple podcast. The latest episode with Greg was such a good episode. So good. If you didn't listen to it, go on Spotify. It was the funniest episode we've, we've done, I think, and also very educational.
We've learned about Greg, how he built an app in Swift without knowing Swift and learning how to code with chat GPT. It's, it's fantastic. So go ahead and listen,
Sandra, have a nice weekend, go into a warm place. Will
Sandra: do. Thank you. Thank you guys. Have a lovely weekend. See you Dan on Monday again. Bye. Bye.
